If you guessed a face mask, you are correct.* In the August-September 2021 issue of the National Wildlife Federation magazine, an article, Sea Oddity, caught my eye. It features an underwater photo taken in California’s Monterey Bay showing a sea lion looking at a face mask. It looks as if another piece of man-made junk has now made an appearance in the water. This blight is bad enough as clutter continues to choke our natural ecosystem. But it gets worse. Disposable face masks are made of a type of plastic that takes somewhere between decades and centuries to decompose. The oceans are already polluted with tons of our plastic waste. According to a recent study quoted in this article, 129 billion throwaway masks are used each month, or 3 million per minute. It costs nothing to make sure our throwaway masks, as with all other disposable materials are properly disposed of or recycled where possible. We can all work together to make this world a cleaner and better place.

*Sorry, this was not a hidden picture. It was more of a rhetorical question.

Thanks,

Cindy

“If we are to go on living together on this earth, we must all be responsible for it.”  Kofi Annan